L4LM had the awesome chance to sit down with Amir Amor of UK’s dance sensation Rudimental, who performed their first headlining Terminal 5 show this past weekend. The band performed a live set, infusing the beautiful sounds of background vocalists, the jazzy melodies of the trumpet, and of course, the jungle packed feel of Rudimental’s upbeat songs, resulting in truely an awe-inspiring performance.
Can you talk about the beginnings of Rudimental? How you all met and started recording?
We all loosely went to school with eachother and met there. We used pirate radio a lot to get our music out there. In the UK we have a culture of pirate radio and that kind of got us doing our first raves and things like that. It was before technology was huge, in the early 2000’s, so it was the only way for people to find out where we were playing.
Your songs tend to blend together multiple genres of music – do you have specific influences from certain genres that you intended to blend together?
None of it is purposeful, that’s the whole magic of Rudimental—we are all stubborn guys and when we get together we just sort of hash it out and start mixing. Our biggest influences came from where we grew up—East London—Hackney. It has great culture, and like I said pirate radio was literally the only way people would know about something. We also grew up around a lot of soul, so for us, albums like “Miss Education” by Lauryn Hill and those of Marvin Gaye were special to us, and mixed with the dance music that we grew up to…we kind of think of ourselves as Electro Soul.
You’ve collaborated with various vocal artists on different songs – how did you choose or find each artist?
It works in different ways. Usually, we write a song and then think about which vocalist would work nicely—we like to look for new talent as well, always looking for new talent. Then there are some other songs with people like John Newman, where we actually sit down and write a song together. But usually, we write the music and the lyrics first.
Rudimental was credited as a writer on ‘Bloodstream’ by Ed Sheeran with members of Snow Patrol, which was produced by Rick Rubin. What was it like working with such an eclectic crew of musicians?
Yeah, that was cool. We happened to be in the studio with Ed, and The Game came down, and we wrote a few songs with him. And Ellie Goulding was there too. And then when everyone left we stayed to write “Bloodstream.” We’ve known Ed for a long time, the first time we met was at a birthday party. So for us it’s pretty easy and natural.
Are there any other artists you’ve written for that your fans may not know of?
Yeah, I work with Plan B a lot. Marina and the Diamonds too. We’ve also done a lot of stuff separately—I was a producer before Rudimental.
You’re scheduled to play a live show at Terminal 5 followed by a DJ set later that night at Slake – can you explain what differences fans can expect from each set?
So the first show is a live show, so that’s all of Rudimental on stage along with the Rudimental family. So that’s nine people on stage. The whole experience is like watching a bunch of guys who grew up together just having fun. The other two shows are DJ sets, but you’ll probably see Mark up there with the trumpet and a few of us bumping around. So yeah, they’re different experiences but they’re both the same energy. DJ Locksmith, who is one of the core members of Rudimental, is also a hype man of sorts, so he’s out there on the mic as well as DJing.
-Stephanie D’Agostini (@stefdaggg)